i could only watch cowgod link the painfully low IQ and inaccurate "Clique Theory" so many times before i felt obligated to share this. this series is basically clique theory for people with triple digit IQs. this is one of the best series of essays i have ever read and is invaluable for anyone who is interested in understanding human social/group dynamics, values, and morality

it might take you a while to get through the whole thing, but it's worth it. and you don't need to have watched 'The Office' in order to understand the material. he just likes using examples from that show

definitely the best rao essay by far. it made me sad when he went off the deep end for a while after trump was elected. he is apparently not the self-styled 'sociopath' that he thinks he is. but damn this essay series is great

good essay (geeks and mops). but i didn't even make it halfway through before i was saying to myself, "yeah, you just gotta keep the mops out." this breakdown is a pattern i've noticed many times in my own own experience, and the above is the only "solution" that ever actually works

an ideal society - like an ideal subculture - is one that has zero mops. a conclusion which has some pretty far-reaching implications, i think

you should've went through with it, sounds like it would've been a good bonding experience for us (unless you were going to imitate one of the many Brothers Spaceporn that have showed up on xo lately. then i'd just be irritated)

also this essay is absurd UNPROFESSIONAL burgher citizen scholar stuff; this narcissist author (entirely different from me, the narcissist reader) comes up with this unnecessary proprietary technical language for terms that already exist, then he proceeds to go and add this silly "edgy" gonzo tone to it to reel in other edutainment-demanding word-militiamen (this is a TFM Total Fraud Move). no discussion of the actual drivers of this phenomenon (Capital, the bourgeoisie's pathological drive towards status-seeking, the death of the meta-narrative aka the death of the "borders" of subcultures i.e. the defining factors + tribal psychological drive)

furthermore the "subculture" as we know it is basically a thing that's unique to modernity---they exist as a result of modernity's (and Capital's, though it is *probably* second order here. different reasons for why, though they intersect at points) need/demand for human activity to be bound to specific "territories" in the cultural landscape. [.] we have specific spaces laid out for the types of interests (and their supporting "intangibles" e.g. an aesthetic) that drive subcultures, and these spaces have real representation on both the physical and psychological planes. Capital demands spatiality; it could only read, commercialize, and make use of *external* landscapes (made up to reflect the *internal* psychological landscape as accurately as possible) in the pre-plugged in era. now, things have changed---Capital has access to much more of the internal space, it's much closer to Man's hidden sparks (and it may not even be necessary! in some cases, man's sparks have scooped out & replaced by a direct route into the circuitry of Capital). so, we see the subcultures disappearing---the subculture has already been hollowed out by the kulturindustrie, the borders' binds are cracked open for entropic harvest. the "interest" is internalized by the individual; the "gaming space" the "comic book space" is now part of the consumer's ever-present lifestyle. there is no beginning or end to this interest, as internal borders find themselves hollowed away through the same mechanism. a man eats call of duty cereal for breakfast before stepping in his call of duty automobile on his way to "work" (he will be playing a call of duty mobile game). but he is not even cognizant of his consuming behavior---he only sees it as life now. he is the brand, the brand is him, and the exclusive call of duty space has ceased to exist

i had to cut out like 3/4ths of this---the stuff after "furthermore"---what a shitty topic to broach on XO. discussing this demands an approach speaking from that weird, difficult-to-pull-off border area between formal writing and informal writing, yet writing on xo only ever really works when you're at the poles

also i dont actually disagree all this strongly, i'm just arguing for the sake of arguing

i don't agree with the assertion that subcultures are unique to modernity and did not previously exist. i feel like this is pretty self-evident but i'm willing to entertain your argument on this. we probably are just working with different definitions of "subculture"

what did not previously exist before modernity is the mop's infiltration of subcultures. you can actually trace this development through history: as civilization has "Progressed," the Eternal Mop has obtained greater and greater access to the tools needed to enter subcultures. hell, back in the Good Old Days, we kept the mops illiterate to get around this problem!

i would think that someone who is drawn to the appeal and rationale of obscurantism would agree with this analysis. we gotta STOP the MOP

Date: November 9th, 2018 12:10 AMAuthor: put on these glasses or start eating that trashcan

Read it... some interesting ideas, and worthwhile as a starting point for thought, but fundamentally flawed for the same reason as Clique Theory, Alpha/Beta and similar big-bucket attempts to classify humanity: it's overly simplistic, fraught with edge cases and exceptions, and treats human traits as fundamental and discrete, while in reality they are a dynamic continuum.

i like his writing, don't get me wrong. it's great in individual sprints, but the whole thing as a marathon rarely ever really seems to come together in the way that he thinks it does. he pulls together a mishmash of other thinkers' ideas, changes out the language, and then adds this unbearable (really, it is. this tone will seem extremely dated in another decade or so) edgy narrative voice that SO MANY bourgeois citizen-scholar e-authors do now. it was entertaining when yarvin did it (was he the first?) but it really isn't aging well.

some of my complaints with "clique theory" apply here too. it's got this aspie drive towards NEUROTIC CLASSIFICATION where everything must fit neatly into these little boxes---it's this unnecessary oversimplification of human behavior and the subtleties of social dynamics. "life will uh find a way" to break free from these classifications to the point where you're wondering why you had them to begin with

maybe it's good as a reference guide for dumbs (which ur obviously not TR) but we have to be wary about stuff like this

(p.s. i also take offense at his misuse of "entropic" w/r/t the social and "creative destruction")

did you read the entire thing though? the first couple aren't that interesting, because The Clueless are in fact not very interesting, but you'll get a chuckle out of the lampooning of the Losers and a warm familiarity from the breakdown of the condition of The Sociopath. i especially enjoyed re-reading the Loser section yesterday because i couldn't help but replay NPC memes in my head as i went through it

the edgy narrator voice is mostly tongue-in-cheek. it's his dry humor writing style. i guess you would have to read enough of his other work to understand what he's trying to do with that - he doesn't actually take himself very seriously. if you'd be picturing him narrating the text as you read it, he would be deadpanning everything, not adding edgy or overdone intonation